In the past two weeks we’ve had our closest Showdown, and our most-voted Showdown ever. So we’re a little hesitant to make any predictions about what this week will deliver… We’ve decided that it’s another of our all-time most popular themes – Gazette – that’ll serve as the canvas on which today’s battle will take place.

The two amazing modifications that’ll be squaring off against each other this week are the colourful SARocks (created by WooThemes co-founder, Mark Forrester) and the sophisticated and awesome, Quarterback Records. Since we’re fair and all, it’ll be Quarterback Records that’s up first…

Quarterback Records – Link (Micheal Sloane & Taylor Trask from Strategic Blend)

Quarterback Records

This is the second modification by the Strategic Blend crew that has been featured in the Showdown series, after they lost out in the very first week with their? “The Station” modification. So hopefully they can give SARocks a run for their money this week again…

Quarterback Records is not your run-of-the-mill record label for hire. Abandoning the notion that one size fits all, Quarterback Records forges partnerships with artists to determine their ideal needs, and the most beneficial way to allocate resources to achieve high marks.

With a warm colour palette of yellows and oranges the site automatically reflects its hot, up and coming artists. With well designed graphics in both the home page featured slideshow and in the sidebar advertising banners, the site comes across very professional, important in wooing new artists.

The background image of? a watermarked sketch of what resembles an American football coach’s handbook perhaps is reflective of its strategic approach at marketing its artists, it can however be misinterpreted and give off the impression that the site is sports related.

On the single post pages a calm, soothing creme colour is used as the background color of? the content block with a serif font type chosen for the blog content, giving it a more corporate feel.

The site has not been customized with regards to its functionality, nor has any of it been moved to other places, but its styling alone gives it a unique look and feel.

Well done guys!

SARocks – Link (Designed by Mark Forrester)

SARocks

A quick note before reviewing the SA Rocks design – We certainly don’t want to come across as biased and say how awesome this design is as it has been designed by one of our co-founders. The site is run by Nic Haralambous, and fueled by his passion for South Africa. Any winnings will most certainly go to Nic.

SA Rocks is not a website dedicated to blindly praising South Africa. I understand that every country has flaws and I do not deny the flaws of South Africa. I do feel that there are enough people who berate our country and it’s time for people to start acting and thinking positively about South Africa.

When designing SA Rocks Mark wanted to adapt the rather corporate looking Gazette theme into a more vibrant, colourful one, reflective of South Africa, otherwise known as the rainbow nation.

A custom logo design with a hint of Superman powers comically showcases the good work Nic is doing for South Africans. With a radiant glow around the logo it pulls the eye further down the page into the content area. Immediately you will see the page navigation and category navigation one below each other, instead of either side of the logo and the default right sidebar has been moved to the left, an easy customization to make. By making these small changes it gives the Gazette theme quite a unique feel.

There is a prominent email subscription form in the right of the header space which encourages users to sign up for regular news updates.

The blog post boxes on the home page are neatly displayed using clean typography and a pale yellow background colouring. With some non-obtrusive Google ads in the single posts and a few tweaks to the post meta data the site has a nice magazine feel to it.

The sidebar tabber has been styled in blue and green, together with the rest of the colours in the design you’ll start to see the colour palette reflecting the colours of the South African flag.

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